Is there a connection between religious ritual and the call to social justice, to making a positive difference in the world? This week’s Torah portion implies that there is. Almost all of Chapter 23 is about holy days: Pesach, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkoth. Most of the text explains the date and purposes of each of these festivals. But immediately after the description of Pesach and Shavuot, and right before the explanation of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkoth, is this verse, “And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I the Lord am your God.” (Leviticus 23:22) What is this one verse doing here? At first glance it seems completely out of place. But perhaps it is not. Its purpose is to remind us that what links our holy days and what is at the center of our religious life is the commandment to act on behalf of the poor, the weak and the outsider. This commitment gives our ritual behaviors, our holy times and acts, meaning. At the same time our rituals and sacred occasions surround, protect and nurture our work for positive change in the world. In Judaism, ritual and social action are linked. We cannot have one without the other.

This week’s Torah portion describes the ritual for purifying the Tabernacle of accumulated ritual impurities on the 10th day of the seventh month called Yom Ha Kippurim. The priest makes atonement for himself and his household with a bull and then takes two goats. One, chosen at random, is sacrificed, while the other has all Israel’s unknown and unintentional sins placed upon and is then led into the Wilderness of Azazel, carrying away all of Israel’s ritual impurity. While this elaborate sacrificial ritual went on, all the Israelites fasted and refrained from all work. Thus the Tabernacle, and later the Temple, was purified and the connection between God and Israel preserved. After the Second Temple was destroyed, the only part of the ritual that remained was the fast and refraining from work, which continued to be observed by all the people. The ritual purification of the Temple was replaced by a personal reflection, atonement and genuine effort to become a better person. In this way the individual connection between each Jew and God was preserved and Yom Kippur as we know it came into being. It is through refinement of our individual character that we bring God into the world.

This week we read one of the strangest portions in the entire Torah. A double portion, both Tazria and Metzora are concerned with afterbirth, skin disease, leprosy and nocturnal emissions. In short, yucky stuff! What do these things have in common? Simply put, the skin is a boundary. What is inside the body is supposed to stay inside. This is a very ancient taboo. But why is all this in the Torah? Perhaps because these Torah portions, ultimately, are about the importance of borders and not breaching them. Borders remind us of who is in and who is out, what is worth defending and what isn’t.

This week’s Torah portion, the second part of Parashat Shemini, is concerned primarilly with the basis of the laws of kashrut—those animals that Jews are permitted to eat and those that Jews are not permitted to eat. After going into some detail about the types of animals that are permitted and forbidden to eat, our portion concludes with these words, “These are the instructions concerning animals, birds, all living creatures that move in water, and all creatures that swarm on earth, for distinguishing between the unclean and the clean, between the living things that may be eaten and the living things that may not be eaten.” (Leviticus 11:46-47) What does all this mean, these rules of forbidden and permitted foods? Many explanations have been given. Maimonides argued that kashrut was an interim step between the ideal state of vegetarianism and the desire to eat meat. Others have argued that kashrut purpose is health, to prevent people from eating dangerous foods. Still others have suggested the goal of kashrut is to keep Jews separate from others. If you can’t eat with others, you remain apart from society. Each of these explanations contains some truth, but perhaps the meaning of kashrut is much simpler. Kosher means fit or suitable, so the goal of kashrut may be to make us be aware of what we eat. While most of us don’t “keep kosher,” in the traditional sense, we do have our own kashrut whether it is vegetarianism, or vegan diet, or avoiding sugar, or any number of dietary systems we follow. But they all have one thing in common, an awareness that what we eat has an impact on us. Awareness of food and food choices is a step toward self-awareness.

Because Reform Jews observe seven days of Pesach rather than eight, just like in Israel, we find ourselves one week ahead of the Torah reading cycle outside the land of Israel but aligned with the cycle in Israel. We bring ourselves back into alignment by dividing Parashat Shemini into two parts. This week we read of the deaths of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu. “Now Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before the Lord alien fire, which He had not enjoined upon them.  And fire came forth from the Lord and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘This is what the Lord meant when He said: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, And gain glory before all the people.’ Our sages have reinterpreted this passage for millennia. Some argue that Nadab and Abihu were killed because they were drunk. Other say that they died because they were arrogant, bringing their own fire, rather than one commanded by God. Still others, looking at the last sentence, say that Nadab and Abihu were consumed by God’s fire because of their desire to be close to God. Another way to read this text may be that we must be careful of our commitments and beliefs. When we become too certain of ourselves, of a religious creed, a political ideology, or a way at looking at the world, we become inflexible and our certainties will destroy us. The challenge is to be committed but open minded at the same time.

Pesach may be the most essential holy day in the Jewish year. First, of all we celebrate freedom, the liberation of Jews from slavery in Egypt, but also the ultimate liberation of all human beings from every kind of bondage – physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. Second, we recognize and celebrate a moral imperative that all human being are meant to be free. Long before the American Declaration of Independence, Judaism recognized that slavery was wrong and that the proper human condition is freedom. Judaism made this a moral imperative when it showed that the Creator of the universe cared enough about the enslavement of the Israelites to be willing to directly engage in human affairs to free the Israelites. Thus, if it is God’s business to oppose slavery and become directly involved to bring about freedom, then we too are challenged to direct our efforts to ensuring that we and all people are free. Finally, Pesach celebrates the possibility of human redemption. This is why, each year, we open our doors for Elijah the Prophet to enter our homes. Elijah presages the coming of the messiah. All three ideas come together during the Passover Seder. This year as we sit around our Seder tables, let us all rededicate ourselves to the ancient Jewish call to work directly for the true freedom of all people. In this way we will be worthy of receiving the messiah and redeeming the world.

This week’s Torah portion begins with a description of the ceremony investing Aaron and his sons into the priesthood. Near the beginning we read, “The fire on the altar shall be kept burning, not to go out: every morning the priest shall feed wood to it, lay out the burnt offering on it, and turn into smoke the fat parts of the offerings of well-being. A perpetual fire shall be kept burning on the altar, not to go out.” (Leviticus 6:5-6) The perpetual fire was a symbol of Israel’s connection to God. It was an unbreakable connection, so the fire had to keep burning all the time. This is where we get the Eternal Light, the Ner Tamid, which hangs over every Ark in every synagogue. One challenge this passage raises is commitment. What people, values or ideals are so important to us that we are willing to work, day and night, to keep them alive, to keep them burning? If we know the answer to that question, we know what we value most and what we are willing to dedicate our lives to.

This week we begin the third book of the Torah, Vayikrah (Leviticus in English). Leviticus, with its careful description of the rules of sacrifice and the details of the sacrificial cult performed in the Tabernacle are frequently seen as overly detailed, boring and irrelevant to our lives. Its insistence on punctilious attention to every detail is antithetical to the individual choice that characterizes the value of our age. But perhaps there is a deeper value within the details themselves. First, Leviticus is the central book in the Torah. There are two books before it and two that follow. If it occupies a central place in our sacred text, perhaps it is of central value to Judaism. Second, perhaps the central issue in Leviticus is not sacrifice but commitment. The question this text raises, with all its attention to detail, is to what length is each of us willing to go to live out our most sacred commitments, whether they be to our families and loved ones, our people, our congregation, our country, or to whatever value we hold most sacred?

This week God speaks directly to the Israelites from Mt. Sinai and reveals the Ten Commandments or the Ten Utterances (Aseret Ha’dibrot), as they are called in Hebrew. The words are simple and remain powerful to this day as rules for our spiritual, personal and communal lives. Our rabbis taught that God spoke the words to each Israelite in the language that they understood perfectly. The Jewish mystics taught that God revealed the entire Torah through the letter aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew aleph bet that has no sound. From this we learn that the entire Torah is a single undivided whole, but open to infinite interpretation. We must understand what binds us together as a people and connects us to our sacred texts but be open to the unfolding of new possibilities.

“There shall be one law for you and for the resident stranger; it shall be a law for all time throughout the ages. You and the stranger shall be alike before the Lord; the same ritual and the same rule shall apply to you and to the stranger who resides among you.” (Numbers 15:15) The call for universal fairness and justice is strong in Judaism. We carry the memory of our slavery in Egypt with us, across time and wherever we live. Having been enslaved because we were different, God commands the Israelites to establish a society that treats the stranger just like the resident. This is an ideal that most societies, including our own, have not yet realized. May we all strive to create a society founded on equal and fair treatment for all.